Don't rent this movie from Blockbuster Video. They carry it, but they cut out about 15 minutes from the fight scene at the end, which is really too bad, because that scene is awesome. You get to see zombies getting attacked with a lawn mower. At length.

I just went to the IMDB to get Peter Jackson's name, and I found out that the original title of this movie was Braindead. But everyone in the US knows it as Dead Alive.

Released at Brain Dead outside the US, there are currently three versions of this movie. The MPAA has seen fit to rate one version R, at 85 minutes runtime. Do not get this version. The unrated version runs 97 minutes. There also exists a bootleglaserdisc dub with Japanesesubtitles, running at ~104 minutes. (numbers are fom the IMDB).

Animal steroids should never ever ever be used to try to kill the undead

A small, 1/2 HP lawn mower has plenty of power to shred a mob of zombies.

Zombies, though dead, apparently still have a large amount of blood in the bodies. Further still, the blood pressure of Zombies seems to be significantly higher than the living as evidenced by the distance blood will squirt when they are injured.

After 8 years, Dead Alive is still champion of using the most fake blood in any movie.

Over 1,000 gallons of fake blood, consisting of chocolate syrup and water, was used for the movie. Only half of the fake blood was using during the zombie kung-fu scenes and the lawn mower vs. zombies fight. The rest was used in the last scene, when the giant zombie mother bursts. Yuck.

A rare rat-monkey is brought back to Wellingtonzoo by a group of explorers. The monkey bites a local woman who is at the zoo spying on her son. She dies from the bite, but comes back to life as a zombie. Naturally as the movie progresses the number of zombies reaches critical mass, and the film ends with the most hillarious lawn-mower scene in movie history.

Not for the faint-hearted, there is so much gore in this movie that in one scene the main character can't run because he is slipping on all the blood. As far as gross goes, this movie gets 11 out of 10, - one scene involves the lead male character passing body parts to the lead female, who disposes of them in a blender.

My favourite character has to be the intestinepuppet that (after being removed from it's body) squishes along the floor strangleing people with it's... well... intestines.

Since the release of Lord of the Rings, and Peter Jackson's subsequent rise to fame, I think it is very worth while that fans of his should see Braindead, as well as Bad Taste.

It shows the coarse, low-brow, gross humour that made Jackson a cult legend.

A brief description of some famous scenes to give prospective viewers an idea of what to expect:

A mutant baby being put in a food processor

A ninja priest, who kicks some zombie ass, then says the phrase "I kick arse for the lord"

The priest, subsequently zombified, shagging a nurse with a broomstick

The protagonist using a lawn mower to turn a ballroom full of zombies into mulch

...Well, you get the picture

It is also worth seeing if you live in New Zealand, as you get to see many of our major television personalities in their early careers, (ie Bill Roleston). The whole thing is a send up of what the country was like in the 1950's.